


let the stars ignite

by Aimee_Elisabeth



Category: Gossip Girl, The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-05-29 05:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6361012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aimee_Elisabeth/pseuds/Aimee_Elisabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The 100 AU</p>
<p>They fall to earth and fall in love. Eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. we're back, bitches

Blair’s cell is covered in art – sketches of stars and sky and profiles she doesn’t recognise. She’s afraid to touch the charcoal drawings. She doesn’t want to smudge the art – it’s all she has had to look at for seven months.

Above her head, a window shows the crescent of the Earth – a swirling mass of blue and green and white, half-bathed in blinding sunshine. It’s one of the few good things about living on a satellite – the view.

She lies on her bed and examines a sketch of a boy – dark-skinned and bright-eyed – wondering who he was to the artist. Friend? Lover? Fantasy? Blair wonders what the boy’s name is and why his face is drawn so that it is the first thing she always sees when she wakes up.

She wonders who the artist was, and what crime they committed to land themselves in isolation. Murder, perhaps? Maybe she’s being too quick to judge – after all, her ‘crime’ certainly wouldn’t warrant isolation. Not if those who had imprisoned her had any sense or decency, at least.

She almost has a heart attack when the pneumatic door hisses open, revealing a pair of guards in black uniform flanking… _Lily van der Woodsen?_

“Blair,” Lily rushes forward and gathers the teenager into her arms.

“Lily? What’s going on?”

“Blair, you have to stay calm and listen to me,” says Lily, smoothing her hands over Blair’s shoulders. “Look at me – you are going to Earth.”

“ _What_?” Blair slaps Lily’s hands away. “Are you insane? No! I’ll die – the surface is still radioactive… isn’t it?”

“Blair, it may be your only chance – you _know_ why we have to lower the Ark’s population. The Ark is dying, but Earth might not be. We’re sending down a hundred prisoners in a drop-ship.”

“So you’re sending down _children_ as _guinea pigs_?” Blair huffs.

“Blair, be reasonable,” Lily folds her arms across her chest. “You know as well as I do that as soon as you turn eighteen, you will probably be floated. On Earth you at least have a chance to _survive_.”

“If I don’t grow a second head, first,” Blair rolls her eyes.

“Are you going to cooperate or not?”

Blair purses her lips and glares at her mother’s best friend for a minute. Finally, she sighs heavily and stands up.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Hold out your arm.” Blair does so, and Lily wraps a sensor bracelet around her wrist. Blair winces as the sensor needles press into her skin. “This will transmit all your vital signs to a command centre on the Ark. Each of the hundred is equipped with one. We need to know that the Earth is survivable.”

“And if it’s not?” Blair asks, raising an eyebrow.

Lily presses her lips into a thin line, returning Blair’s unimpressed look.

“You _know_ that our options are limited,” she says. “I know that it’s possible that you may die on Earth, but at least you’ll have a _chance_. The possibility of death on Earth is better than the certainty of being floated once you’re a legal adult.”

“What, like my father?”

“Harold’s death–”

“– _murder_ –”

“– was a choice made by Chancellor Bass. Blair, what other suggestions do you have? Telling the public and inciting a mass riot? We’re working on the problem; this is just to buy us more time.”

“If I die, I just want you to know,” Blair takes a breath, “I hate you.”

With that she stalks towards the door, where the guards are waiting to escort her to the drop ship. She recognises some of the other prisoners being ushered in the same direction. Serena and Nate are among them, her best friends in the world before she got arrested. She supposes that without her to run interference, they finally got caught getting high or mixing up illegal moonshine.

She also sees Georgina Sparks – who was arrested three years ago for trying to strangle Kati Farkas for no apparent reason. Everyone knows that Georgina’s a crazy bitch.

“Get your hands off my brother!” a tall blonde girl shoves one of the guards away from a skinny boy as they’re herded down the walkway.

“Brother?” the guard blinks, confused. “No one has a brother.”

“You’re one of the Humphrey kids, aren’t you?” the other guard sneers. “Locked under the floorboards for fifteen years. I bet you’re both crazy.”

“And yet I have more manners than you,” the blonde retorts.

Blair remembers the scandal that erupted only a week before her father was sentenced to death. The Humphreys had broken the one-child policy twice over by hiding their twins – Jenny and Eric – under the floorboards of their apartment in Factory Station whenever there was an inspection. They’d been discovered at a masquerade party when one of the guards had asked for their IDs. The twins were imprisoned and their parents were jettisoned into space, leaving their oldest brother – David or Dylan or something – orphaned and alone.

“Jenny, it’s okay,” Eric Humphrey places a gentle hand on his sister’s shoulder and turns her away from the guard. “We don’t want any trouble. Let’s just go.”

Blair keeps to herself as she and the rest of the prisoners make their way to the drop ship. Mentally she reviews everything she remembers from her Earth Skills classes – a life in space doesn’t exactly prepare one for life on the ground, surrounded by greenery and bugs and changing seasons.

“Blair!” Serena calls out to her from the other side of the drop ship, a bright smile on her face. Blair’s gut churns. How can she act like nothing’s wrong? How can she act like they’re not being sent to die on the ground? How can she act like they’re still friends when Serena is the reason her father is dead?

Blair turns away from the blonde and straps herself into the seat next to the Humphrey girl. Absent-mindedly she tugs at the ring on a chain around her neck; a Yale graduate ring that belonged to one of her great-great-great-great grandfathers or something. It had belonged to her father, and he had passed it to her only moments before he was floated.

It’s the only thing she has left of him.

After all the prisoners are strapped into to their seats, the guards disappear down the hatch and everything is silent. Then, the ship is jettisoned.

It feels like an eternity stretches between the initial jolt of being detached from the Ark and the violent shuddering of the ship as it enters the earth’s atmosphere, but in reality only minutes pass. Almost immediately after they enter earth’s atmosphere, Chancellor Bass appears on screens all around the ship.

“Prisoners of the Ark,” he says, obnoxiously serene as the teenagers on the drop ship descend into chaos. “Hear me now; you have been given a second chance, an opportunity to save yourselves, and even to save humankind. We have no idea what might be awaiting you on the ground – frankly, we’re sending _you_ because you are expendable—”

“Your grandfather’s a _dick_ , Chuck,” Georgina shouts.

“I am aware,” the Chancellor’s heir drawls, lazily unbuckling his seatbelt and floating across the still-falling ship. “You’d think being _family_ he’d look away from my… transgressions. Honestly I’m surprised he never floated me earlier.”

Still on screen, Chancellor Bass explains that if they survive their crash to earth their crimes will be pardoned, as if there would be an authority on the ground to enforce the laws they’ve all broken – however minor.

“You wasted a month of oxygen on an illegal spacewalk, Chuck,” Blair scoffs as he floats in front of her, smirking obnoxiously. “That’s more than just smoking some ‘soothing herbs’ – that’s lowering life expectancy.”

“Mountains, molehills,” Chuck shrugs, “it doesn’t matter what rule you break – they all get you killed. Might as well go out with a bang.”

“Shhh!” Nelly Yuki gestures for them to be quiet, trying to listen to Chancellor Bass talking about supplies in a military bunker in Mt. Weather. Chuck just scowls, twisting in the air to glare at her.

“Chuck, strap in!” Blair shouts as Chuck floats away. “The parachutes will deploy soon and you’ll probably break your face on the floor!”

“Thanks for the advice on how to bore myself to death,” Chuck retorts, laughing as two other boys unstrap themselves to float beside him in drop ship’s free fall.

Two seconds later he almost literally swallows his words as the parachutes are released. The sudden deceleration causes the ship to lurch and the floating boys are flung into the walls, crashing into beams and wires on their way.

Blair grips her armrests so tightly that her knuckles turn white, bracing herself for impact. The screens all shorted out after Chuck and his copycats crashed through the wires, so she imagines there’s been some damage to the ship’s communication systems. She’ll have to get Nate to fix that – he’s always been more interested in engineering than her.

Next to her, the Humphrey siblings are clinging to each other for dear life.

When the drop ship hits the ground it knocks the breath right out of her. For a few dizzy minutes everyone is hazily disoriented. Blair recovers quickly, unstrapping herself and lurching across the aisle to check on the Humphreys. Jenny appears to be fine, but her brother has fainted. Chuck is on the floor and Blair checks his pulse. Still beating. Pity. Across the room, Nate and Serena are trying to disentangle their seatbelts. Blair checks the pulses of the other two boys – dead.

“The outer door is on the lower level!” someone shouts. “Let’s go!”

“No! We can’t just open the doors,” Blair leaps to her feet and follows the others down the hatch. On the lower level is a curly-haired guard trying to calm the crowd.

“Hey! Calm down guys, just back up,” he shouts, pushing against the wave of teenagers rushing for the door. “Allow me.”

“Stop!” Blair pushes through the crowd and grabs the guard’s arm. He looks down at her in surprise. “The air could be toxic.”

The guard rolls his eyes. “Would you rather we suffocate to death in here?”

“Dan?” The Humphrey boy must have woken up, because he’s clinging to his sister and lurching through the crowd. “What are you doing here?”

“Eric! Jenny!” The guard’s face splits into a grin, and the twins rush into his arms, hugging him so tightly Blair thinks he might just stop breathing.

“Why are you wearing a guard’s uniform?” Jenny asks.

“Borrowed it to get on the drop ship,” Dan shrugs. “Couldn’t let you keep earth all to yourself, you know. You have to share, Jen.”

“You’re an idiot,” Jenny rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning.

“You ready for the ground?” he asks Blair, who is still hovering behind him. She grips her wristband tightly, and nods. He’s right – either they open the door to potentially toxic air, or they’re guaranteed to suffocate in the drop ship.

Humphrey opens the door, and all the delinquents recoil from the bright sunlight. With her eyes closed against the sun, Blair takes in a deep breath – her first taste of fresh oxygen in her life. She never knew that air could taste this sweet.

Eric is the first to move, stepping out into the light and towards the bright green of what must be a forest. There’s more colour here than Blair has ever dreamed of. She didn’t know the world would be this bright, this beautiful.

Jenny rushes past her brother and leaps onto the ground, throwing up her hands in victory and crying out: “WE’RE BACK, BITCHES!”

It’s like an explosion; the 100 – 99 of them now, including Humphrey and less the two dead boys – rush forward and into the sun, away from the machinery of the drop ship. Blair picks up a map and joins them, gasping at the springiness of the grass beneath her feet, so different from the rigid metal of the Ark she grew up on.

There’s a ridge about a hundred feet into the forest, and Blair unrolls the map to check the topography and get the lay of the land. She frowns at the lines on the paper in her hands, before looking up at the mountain standing opposite from her.

Shit.

“What’s the matter, Queen B?” Chuck sidles up to her, and Blair rolls her eyes. “It’s not like we died in a fiery explosion.”

“You could have,” Blair points out. “It’s too bad you didn’t.”

Chuck scoffs and shoves his hands into his pockets.

“I forgot how much of a prickly little bitch you are,” he says. “Solitary confinement didn’t soften you at all, did it?”

“You see that peak over there?” Blair points at it. “That’s Mount Weather. There’s a radiation soaked forest between us and our next meal. Your grandfather dropped us on the wrong damn mountain.”

Before Chuck can reply, Blair stalks off.

The oldest Humphrey – whose first name she has forgotten – is sitting by his brother, checking his temperature and asking if he’s okay. Blair can see him better now, in the light of day. He has a very striking face – pale skin and dark eyes and a strong, sharp jaw. He can’t be much older than her and is maybe nineteen or twenty. He’s too young to be given the responsibility of chaperoning a hundred teenagers. He’s suspicious.

“Humphrey,” she calls, catching his attention.

“Who’re you?”

“Blair Waldorf.”

“Ah, the councilwoman’s daughter,” he scoffs.

“We’re on the wrong mountain,” she tells him, ignoring his sneer.

“What makes you think that?”

“I can read a map,” she waves the paper in her hand and he straightens.

“Can you, now?” he arches an eyebrow. “Okay, show me.”

She unrolls the paper on the open door, stretched out from the mouth of the ship it acts as a makeshift table. She points to the peak that is Mt Weather and to the other hill across the valley, which is where the drop ship is.

“This is us,” she says, “and this is where we need to be. I checked the topography, and if that,” she points, “is north, then that,” she gestures back towards the mountain she and Chuck were looking at before, “is Mt Weather.”

“What’s your point?” Humphrey folds his arms across his chest.

“Food, obviously,” Blair scowls at him. “There’s twenty miles between here and there. If we want to get to the mountain by nightfall we need to leave _now._ ”

“Who died and made you Queen?” Humphrey huffs. “We can’t leave. We don’t know the terrain, or what the weather’s like. Here, we have shelter. We have clothes and basic supplies. We’re not leaving. Not yet.”

“Say that again in six hours when you start to get hungry,” Blair says, mimicking his stance and folding her arms across her chest. Humphrey rolls his eyes.

“Spoken like one of the privileged,” he says. “I’ve been hungry before, Waldorf, and so have most of the rest of us. But if you’re so keen to eat, you can take a gaggle of your gossiping minions and go find your mountain.”

He walks away before she can retort and Blair finds herself glaring at his back.

“Blair,” a hand falls down on her shoulder and she flinches back until she realises whom the hand belongs to. Nate Archibald stands behind her with his hands and eyebrows raised, and he looks so young and confused that she actually laughs.

She hasn’t laughed months, had forgotten how freeing it feels.

“Nate!” she steps forward and wraps her arms around him on instinct, and feels his arms drape around her shoulders in return. He feels so warm, so safe.

“B,” the second voice is quieter, hesitant.

Blair turns her head and sees Serena hovering nearby, pouting and unsure. A part of her wants to pull Serena into her embrace as well, wants to comb her fingers through golden hair and assure her that everything will be all right. But another part of her wants to attack with claws and teeth, to scratch Serena’s eyes out and pull her pretty hair, because Serena told a secret and now Blair’s father is dead.

“S,” Blair nods, her tone chilly. She turns back to Nate. “We need to go to Mt Weather and get supplies before we starve to death.”

“You’re the boss,” Nate nods, because Blair always knows what she’s doing.

“Get Penelope and Hazel – we’ll need more hands to carry enough food for the hundred of us,” Blair instructs, and Nate nods, stalking off.

“B, are you going to talk to me?” Serena asks, small and soft.

“No, I’m not.” Blair says, and turns away.

“Can Eric and I come, too?” Jenny appears at Blair’s shoulder, with her twin at her side. They blink at her, wide-eyed and earnest.

“Sure,” Blair shrugs. “Why not. We need all the hands we can get. Come with me – we should get something to carry everything with.”

They climb into the wrecked drop ship and find a couple of backpacks. They empty the bags of the few supplies the drop ship had been launched with and return outside just in time to meet up with Nate, Hazel, Serena, and Penelope.

“You’re coming, too?” Blair sneers at her ex-best friend. Serena shrugs and moves closer to Nate, who wraps an arm around her waist.

“Blair—” he begins to say, but she holds up a hand.

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

“Hey, where are you going?” Humphrey One snags his sister by the elbow, frowning at the backpack in her hands. “You can’t leave.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Jenny yanks her arm back. “You can’t keep us locked up forever, you know. I’m _free_ , and I have a whole world to explore.”

Humphrey swallows, his expression softening into something so sad and yearning that Blair feels her heart twist just looking at him.

“Jenny, _please—_ ”

“I’m going.”

“Going where?” Chuck interrupts, leering at them. “An orgy? Without me? I’m hurt.” Mockingly, he puts his hand over his heart. Blair frowns.

“Were you trying to take this off?” she grabs at his hand, examining his wristband.

“Yeah, so?”

“So this wristband transmits your vital signs to the Ark,” she tells him. “Take it off and they’ll think you’re dead. We don’t want that?”

“We don’t?” Chuck scoffs.

“The Ark needs to know if the earth is inhabitable,” Blair huffs. “So they can follow us down here. They won’t come down if they think we’re dying.”

“I don’t care,” Chuck shrugs, and walks off.

“God, he’s such a pain,” Blair mutters. She turns back to Humphrey, who appears to be having a stare-off with his sister while their brother hovers uncertainly in the background. “Humphrey, relax. We’re going for a walk, not to war.”

Humphrey turns his glare on her, instead, his eyes dark and intense.

“Fine. But if anything happens to them, it’s on _you_ , Waldorf.”

He stalks off before she can reply, _again._

“Your brother’s a pain in the ass,” she tells Jenny, who scoffs.

“Tell me about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note:** I made Jenny and Eric twins because I always thought that Eric's bond with Jenny was more powerful than his bond with Serena, and I wanted them to maintain their close friendship in this fic. Eric's identity was never that closely tied to being a Van der Woodsen anyway. 
> 
> In this AU Blair and Nate never dated, but he didn't date Serena until after Blair was arrested because Serena knew Blair had a crush on him and didn't want to upset anything. 
> 
> In terms of Dan being in charge of stuff as a Bellamy-equivalent: I know he was 'Lonely Boy' on GG but a lot of that was circumstance and the prejudices between him and the UES-ers, but he's actually quite charismatic (see: parties and active involvement @ NYU) so I don't think it's unrealistic that he become a leader of a bunch of kids younger than him, especially because he has such a way with words.


	2. methods of persuasion

Dan expected Earth to be more… ruined. There was a nuclear war that destroyed _everything_ 300 years ago – he expected a desert wasteland instead of all this: lush forests and clean air and soft, dewy grass beneath his boots.

He watches Jenny and Eric disappear into the greenery with that bossy Waldorf girl and feels his hands curling into fists. The last time he let them out of his sight his family fell to pieces and his parents died. He can’t lose Eric and Jenny, too. They’re all he has left, and he’d do anything for them. Anything.

“Hey there, hot stuff.” Dan grimaces as a hand trails sensually over his shoulders. Georgina Sparks smirks up at him, all blue eyes and dark curls and mischief playing around her lips. Everyone knows that Georgina is completely insane, but no one can deny that she is aggressively gorgeous, the kind of pretty that one can’t ignore.

“What do _you_ want?” he asks.

“You’re not really the assigned guard, are you?”

“What makes you think that?” Dan asks, affecting nonchalance.

Georgina just arches an eyebrow and nods at the backpack in his hands. He’d packed some basic survival gear – clothes for himself, Eric, and Jenny. A tent. Some scrap metal he could fashion into knives. He’s not going to stick around for the Ark to come down and punish him for his crimes.

“You’re too young,” she says, smirking. “There’s no way they’d put some kid in charge of all of us, you’d be too easily… seduced.” Her hand ghosts down his chest, and Dan bats it away. She’s pretty, sure, but she’s unpredictable. Dan isn’t taking any risks. Not anymore, not if he can help it.

“Your point?” he asks shortly.

Georgina’s smirk turns downright predatory.

“What are you running away from?”

“The same thing we all are,” he gestures towards the sky. “The Ark.”

“Do you really think you’ll be able to survive out there, on the ground, on your own?” she laughs, cruel and sharp. “Baby, you’ll be dead in two days.”

Dan pauses in his packing, and turns to consider her. She has her arms folded across her chest, her silver wristband glinting in the sunlight. His mind drifts back to Waldorf’s words from earlier: _they won’t come down if they think we’re dying._

“You don’t want the Ark to come down, do you?”

“Of course not,” Georgina scoffs. “Those old fogies will ruin all our fun.”

Dan grins, sharp-toothed like a shark.

“I have a plan.”

. . .

 

The Ark is in chaos. The Chancellor has been shot and is in surgery with Eleanor Waldorf. An exodus ship was launched towards earth without explanation.

Lily van der Woodsen is trying to field questions about the exodus ship that detached from Beta Station, but all she’s saying is that there was an engineering malfunction and that it’s a miracle no one was hurt.

Carter knows better. As a zero-G mechanic he’d finished fixing up the airlock repairs in record time and floated around to check the couplings where the drop ship had deployed. They were fully operational. Something isn’t adding up.

He wants to talk to Dan about it, before remembering that Dan broke up with him. Out of the blue, for no goddamn reason. Just last week they’d been talking about moving in together, trading lazy kisses in bed as Dan – a janitor – made jokes about cleaning up Carter’s messes. Then, two days ago, Dan had broken up with him:

“It’s not going to work,” he’d said. “I can’t lead you on when we’re not going anywhere. You’re too good for me, Baizen.”

It had sent Carter reeling. Dan breaking up with him, the Chancellor getting shot, the exodus ship getting launched. There is too much happening all at once, and Carter just wants _answers_. At least he knows one place he can get some.

“Where are you going?” Ben asks him as Carter strips off his zero-G suit as fast as he can. “We still have to check your vitals.”

“I’m fine,” Carter brushes him off. “I’m going to lock up. I have to ask Jenny about Dan. If anyone knows why he dumped me, it’ll be her.”

Ben looks sympathetic in the face of Carter’s heartbreak, but he says:

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Lock up’s in quarantine; some kind of virus. No visits for the next few days.”

“What?”

“Besides, Humphrey’s obviously unhinged—”

“What do you mean?” Carter scowls.

Ben backs up, holding his hands up above his shoulders.

“It’s all over the comms,” he says. “They figured it out while you were doing repairs. Humphrey shot Chancellor Bass. As soon as they find him, they’ll float him.”

“Dan?” Carter scoffs. “No way. Dan’s a softie, he couldn’t hurt anyone if he _tried_.” He thinks of Dan in his bed, mussed hair and sleepy eyes and a blurry smile.

“They did a sweep of the Ark, and Humphrey is unaccounted for,” Ben shrugs. “Jack Bass says he saw someone fitting his description acting suspiciously near the weapons cache, but he was wearing a guard’s uniform, so he dismissed it as just a confused rookie. Humphrey’s parents worked in textiles; it wouldn’t be hard for him to get his hands on a uniform. It makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Carter growls.

He shrugs on his shirt and storms out of the airlock.

“Where are you going?” Ben calls out after him.

“To get some answers!”

. . .

 

It doesn’t take long for Dan to convince several delinquents to remove their wristbands. He’s got a way with words, and can be charming when he wants to be – he’s learned a lot from Carter, who is the most charming person he’s ever met.

“What do you think will happen when the Ark gets down here?” he asks Kati and Is, huddled together beneath a wing of the drop ship. “They’ll just pardon our crimes? Treat us like model citizens? Even if they do, people like us,” from Factory Station, from Mecha Station, those of them who have to work for everything they get, living off scraps and in constant danger of being de-pressurised because their stations aren't priorities for airlock repair, “we’re always going to be second priority to the council. They make _us_ do all the work while _they_ reap all the benefits.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Is asks, while Kati chews the end of her braid.

Dan smirks.

“Take off your wristbands,” he tells them. “The Ark will think you’re dead – that it’s not safe to follow us down. They can have their rules, and we’ll make our own. We have a whole world down here to explore; we’re not going to let them cage us anymore, are we?”

“No,” Kati smiles timidly, gripping Is’s hand. “We’re not.”

He helps them pry their wristbands off with a knife he’d shaped out of a scrap of the wrecked drop ship, gently wiping at the blood that welled up when the sensor needles were pulled out of their skin.

“Thanks, Humphrey,” Kati murmurs. Dan offers her a smile in return.

“Well aren’t you smooth, Mr Heartbreaker,” Georgina drapes herself over his shoulders. Dan rolls his eyes and shrugs her off. “Pretty words and pretty smiles work much better for you than me.”

“What have you been doing, then?” he asks, gesturing to the tree nearby that Georgina has decorated with removed wristbands.

Her smile turns sharp and deadly.

“Oh, my methods of persuasion are more,” she pauses, eyes glinting, “ _aggressive_ than yours, I imagine.”

Dan frowns.

“We don’t want anyone getting hurt,” he says. “That’s the whole point of this.”

“That’s _your_ point,” Georgina scoffs. “Why do our motives matter when our endgame is the same?”

“Don’t cross me, Georgina,” he growls. “These kids deserve a second chance as much as I do – deserve it more, probably. I’m not going to let you do whatever the hell you want just because the council has no power here.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” she narrows her eyes at him, jabbing him sharply in the chest. “Just because you wear that uniform doesn’t make you an authority.”

“But this does,” Dan pulls his jacket aside and flashes the hilt of his gun at her. He doesn’t think about how he used this gun to murder Chancellor Bass. He knows what he’s guilty of, and whom he was protecting when he did it. He’d do anything to protect his family, and if that means breaking his own heart, then so be it.

Georgina takes a step back, hands up and smile faux-innocent.

“Okay then, tough guy,” she shrugs, backpedalling. “Your rules. For now.”

. . .

 

Eleanor Waldorf emerges from the OR exhausted and sore.

“Well?” Lily asks.

“Bart will live,” Eleanor assures her. “He’s sleeping now, but stable.”

“Thank goodness,” Lily sighs, pressing her hand to her heart. “Have they apprehended the man who did this?”

Eleanor scoffs.

“Man? He’s just a boy. You remember the Humphrey Scandal last year?” Lily nods. “It was their eldest; David or Dylan or something. Jack thinks he snuck onto the drop ship to be with his brother and sister.”

“Rufus’s boy?” Lily frowns. “But how? I thought he was expelled from the guard corps after his parents were floated.”

“He must have had help,” Eleanor shrugs, her tone ice cold. “You know how it is around here; there’s always a conspiracy.”

“Eleanor,” Lily murmurs, voice soft. “What happened to Harold was a tragedy.”

“Spare me,” Eleanor scoffs. “No apologies are going to give me back my husband. Or my daughter.”

“My daughter is on the ground, too, Eleanor.”

“I don’t care,” Eleanor says, and turns on her heel to stalk off.

She only makes it a few metres before she finds herself being stopped by a grease-smudged boy from Mecha Station.

“Dr Waldorf,” he says, “I need to speak with you.”

“What do you want, boy?” Eleanor sighs. She’s too tired for this shit.

“I went by lock up and I noticed that the air ducts are all open,” he says, watching her carefully. “If there really were a virus, wouldn’t you move to contain the airflow in lock up? What are you hiding?”

She regards him in shocked silence for a moment. Who is this insolent young man to question _her_? How dare he accuse her so openly, so aggressively?

“The virus isn’t airborne,” she says instead, the lie spilling easily from her lips. “There’s no need to control the airflow.”

“Then,” he swallows nervously, “can I visit my friends? Please?”

“I’m afraid we can’t allow that,” she shakes her head. “We have quarantine regulations for a reason. We can’t have the rest of the Ark falling sick. Especially not a specialist like you.” She gestures to grease smudged cheek, clearly indicating that he’s either a mechanic or an engineer – both incredibly valuable positions when their whole world is literally a machine.

The boy’s jaw clenches, his eyes turning hard.

“Thanks for your time,” he grits out, before pushing past her and disappearing into the maze of hallways and corridors that make up the Ark.

Eleanor sighs again. Seriously, she’s too tired for this shit.

. . .

 

Blair feels awkward, walking through the forest with Nate and Serena – and Hazel and Penelope and the Humphrey twins following behind. It should feel familiar; only a year ago they were striding through the Ark together in a similar formation, Nate and S with their arms around her waist and shoulders respectively, with Penelope and Hazel lagging behind, sighing enviously.

It’s different now. Blair’s spent nine months without any company but her own. She’s no longer used to being around _people_. She forgot that they could _talk_ so much, chattering on and on about nothing.

“Flowers!” Serena gasps, rushing towards the purple blooms. “They’re so pretty!”

“You’re pretty,” Nate gushes, plucking one and tucking it behind Serena’s ear. “You know – these are poison sumac.”

“Poison? Nate!” Serena quickly bats the flower away. Blair rolls her eyes.

“The flowers aren’t poisonous, they’re medicinal,” Nate tucks a new flower into Serena’s hair whilst popping another into his mouth. “Calming, actually,” he says around a mouthful of petals.

“How do you know all that?” Eric asks, jogging to keep up with the taller boy.

“Nate’s family runs the medicinal farms in Alpha Station,” Hazel explains.

“He’s always had an eye for the more _calming_ herbs,” Penelope giggles.

“Shut up,” Nate groans. “You guys never complained.”

“Yeah, but they were also too high to keep an eye out for the guards,” Serena sighs, tucking herself into Nate’s side. “Which is how we got _caught_.”

“You were high, too!” Penelope protests.

 _God, do they ever shut up?_ Blair wonders. _Were they always this annoying?_

“Guys!” she barks, “could you try to keep up?”

“Come on, B,” Nate smiles, his blue eyes sparkling. “Relax. We’re on earth, and it’s beautiful. Here, have some sumac.”

“There’s so much _space_ here,” Jenny agrees. “How do you block all this out?”

“I’ve got other things to worry about,” Blair snaps. “Like how we’re going to survive on the ground without food, or shelter, or medicine for when we all start getting sick. Or how about the fact that the Ark is _dying_ and my mother probably only has about four months to live?”

She turns on her heel and stalks off, upset and frazzled.

“What?” Hazel gasps. “What do mean ‘dying’?”

Blair marches on, her fists tightening around the straps of her backpack until the material cuts red welts into her fingers.

“It’s why my father was floated,” she says as she keeps moving, “and why I was put into solitary. He was the engineer who found the flaw and he wanted to tell people. The council disagreed – they didn’t want to people to panic – but he was going to come forward anyway. And then _someone_ ,” out of the corner of her eye, she sees Serena flinch, “spilled everything to one of the councilwomen. Now my father is dead and the Ark is doomed.”

“I say let them die,” Jenny says, startling the rest of the group. “They arrested Eric and I just for being _born_. I couldn’t care less about them.” She stalks off, ahead of Blair, angrily pushing aside leaves and branches.

Eric shuffles nervously, adjusting the pack on his back.

“I’m sorry about Jen,” he says. “She’s always been, uh, _angrier_ about our situation than me. She’s never really known other people besides our parents and Dan, and the Ark took them away from us.”

“We have to warn the Ark,” Penelope says, wringing her hands. “My parents are still up there.”

“Mine, too,” Hazel murmurs.

“Nate,” Blair says, and he looks up at her with an expression more serious than any she’s ever seen him wear. “When we get back to the camp with food, I need you to look at the communications equipment. I think it might have been damaged when we crashed, but if you can rig it right, we might be able to get a message back to the Ark.”

“And tell people what’s happening?” he asks.

“Exactly.”

“Eric!” Jenny rushes back towards them, a bright smile on her face. “Eric you have to _see_ this!” She grabs her brother’s hand and drags him away. The other teenagers exchange unsure glances before shrugging and following her.

Jenny leads them into a dense copse of trees, the branches overlapping so thickly that it becomes almost like a darkened cave when they shimmy between the trunks. What they see when they’re inside takes their breath away.

“What _are_ they?” Eric asks, eyes wide.

“Butterflies,” Blair says. It’s the first time since she’s gotten to earth that she’s truly been able to appreciate the beauty of the ground. Thousands of glowing blue butterflies flutter above their heads, dotting the darkness like living stars.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” Penelope murmurs.

“Me neither,” Hazel agrees.

Blair looks at the awed faces around her and quickly ducks out of the copse to check the state of daylight. It’s getting darker outside, not just in the butterfly copse. She makes a decision.

“It’s getting darker,” she says as she re-enters the copse. “Let’s set up camp here for tonight and keep walking tomorrow.”

“Really?” Serena beams, and Blair is still so peaceful in the presence of the butterflies that she doesn’t even glare at the girl who ruined her life.

“Really.”

. . .

 

Dan watches the sky fade into a tapestry of red and gold and feels his breath catch in his lungs. For three seconds it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and then he remembers Chancellor Bass’s blood blooming like a flower from the bullet Dan had put in his chest, remembers the Chancellor’s glassy eyes as he fell to his knees. Dan had run away before the Chancellor hit the ground.

He staggers behind the drop ship and vomits into a bush, feeling light-headed and disgusted with himself. He’s a monster. He knows he’s a monster, but he also knows _why_ he did it. For Jenny and Eric, to protect them, to protect his family.

“Are you okay?” Nelly Yuki asks him when he steps back into the clearing.

“Fine,” he waves it off. “I think the stress of the day just hit me, that’s all.” He looks around at all the delinquents, still exploring their surroundings excitedly. “I think we should gather some wood to make a fire. I don’t know how cold it’s going to get tonight, but we should have a source of heat anyway.”

“I’ll tell the others,” Nelly nods.

He looks out into the forest, still feeling sick to his stomach. Jenny and Eric are out there, and while he _knows_ that they’re both smart and capable kids, he still _worries_ about them when they’re out of his sight.

They’re all he has left to live for.

“Kati, Is,” he gestures for the two girls to come over. “Do you think you could set up a few rings of stones to guard a fire? We’ll need heat tonight.”

“Sure,” they walk off together and Dan scrubs a hand down his face.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he says out loud.

“I’ve noticed.” He doesn’t jump this time, when Georgina appears like a wraith beside him. “That’s why you need me.”

“Yeah? What’s your plan, then?”

Georgina’s smile is feral and her fingers slide down his chest towards his belt.

“Let’s go _wild_ ,” she suggests.

Dan grips her wrist and pulls her hand away from his crotch.

“Maybe some other time,” he says, before stalking off.

Waldorf, as annoying as she might have been, was right. They’ll need food, soon. Hunger is already gnawing at his stomach. They’ll also need a source of water, and weapons or traps for hunting. Shit, he doesn’t even know if there are any animals in this damn forest. Tomorrow he’ll have to use what he remembers from his Earth Skills class to see if any of the plants around them are edible.

It would be easier if he could let the Ark come down, with their farmers and doctors and engineers, but he can’t take that risk. They’ll kill him for what he’s done, and Jenny and Eric will be alone. He’ll make this work. He’ll have to.

He sends Aaron Rose out to call the wandering delinquents back to camp while he helps Kati and Is build bonfires for heat. He still feels like the imposter he is, watching these kids listen to him when he’s barely older than they are. They’re looking to him for guidance but Dan doesn’t know how to guide them.

He watches them dance and cheer around the flames, a beacon in the darkness of the forest, and tries to ignore that sinking feeling in his stomach.

He doesn’t know if he can protect them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note:** obviously not everything is going to go exactly like the 100 or GG, but a lot of the original 100 storyline will remain. pan!Dan is a very important headcanon to me (because lbr he was totally lowkey thirsty for Nate 80% of the time + _it rhymes_ ) and I read a Carter/Dan fic that made me lowkey ship it so... it's my fic and I can do whatever the hell I want, basically. 
> 
> About Dan being protective of the 100 in the last scene – I don't think it's out of character for him, because he basically spends the entirety of GG looking after the NJBC and making sure they're (relatively) physically and emotionally healthy and he inherited Rufus' need to be the dad!friend to everything that moves, so I think it's realistic for him that as soon as he realises he's responsible for these kids that he's going to internalise that responsibility and want to protect them. 
> 
> idk, if you think anyone's acting particularly out of character, let me know.


	3. not alone

Carter grits his teeth as he squeezes through the maintenance tunnels of Alpha Station. He _knows_ there’s an observation deck there that – for whatever reason – has been cut off from public access. He’s willing to bet a week’s rations that whatever they’re doing there has something to do with all the chaos on the ark; the quarantine in lock up, the Chancellor getting shot, and Dan’s mysterious disappearance. He’s going to get answers, one way or another.

“Shit,” he hisses as he almost falls into a drop shaft. “Shit,” he says again as he realises he’s in a four-way intersection. Up, down, left, or right. Which way? He pulls out one of his small mechanics’ flashlights and squints down at his roughly pencilled map of the tunnels in this station.

“If I came in through the Mecha entrance here,” he murmurs, tracing his path with his knuckle, “then I must be here-ish. The observation deck is… left. No, down! No.”

He frowns at the paper, mentally retracing his steps. Damn, the measurements don’t align – he miscalculated. It looks like he’ll be here for a little while.

. . .

 

Dan wakes to what sounds like a hail bullets. He leaps to his feet, fearing attack, before realising that what he hears is actually rain hitting the drop ship. Several of the delinquents are already awake and standing in awe beneath the falling water.

“Kati! Is!” he calls. “Gather some buckets or drums or something, let’s see if we can collect this water. Try and turn that wing over and turn it into a water tank.”

“Isn’t this amazing?” one of the girls gasps, laughing in delight as water collects in her cupped palms. “I didn’t think it would be like this!”

Dan finds himself smiling softly – the pure joy on her face reminds him of the smile Jenny used to give him whenever he was able to bring back little trinkets from around the Ark for her. He gave her a flower from Farm Station, a glass marble stolen from the heirlooms vault, a broken radio from Mecha station that she and Eric fixed up so that they could listen to music together.

“Come on,” he tells the girl. “Let’s collect as much as we can, so that we can drink it later. Maybe we’ll have enough left over for bathing, if we’re lucky.”

“Humphrey, don’t be such a tight-ass,” Georgina laughs, spinning beneath the downpour, her dark hair plastered to her face. “Have a little _fun_.”

“I can have fun and be responsible at the same time,” he protests.

Georgina rolls her eyes.

“Do you even _hear_ yourself? Tell the truth: you’re actually eighty.”

“Georgina, we could _die_ of dehydration if we don’t find a water source.”

She shrugs, her blue eyes so bright they almost glow.

“So? Let us die, then. _Carpe Diem!_ Seize the day!”

She whoops and charges out into the forest, followed by several other delinquents all excited for the rain and freedom they’ve found on the ground.

Dan shakes his head and turns to the kids that remain.

“All right! Let’s get busy!”

“Why do we have to work?” one of the boys asks. Dan rolls his eyes.

“Literally all you have to do is pull out something that can catch the water and leave it under the rain, then you can splash around to your heart’s content. I promise,” he grins, pushing his curls away from his forehead. “It’s not that hard.”

He’s just finished upturning part of the ruined drop ship to act as a large water tank, stopping up leaks in the side as much as he can with moss and tree branches, when Nelly appears by his side, looking pensive.

“You know she’s crazy, right?”

“Who?”

“Georgina.”

He looks out at the section of forest that Sparks had dived into with her merry band of misfits. It’s been half an hour now and the rain is easing up, but there’s no sign of them anywhere. He half hopes she won’t come back.

“Yeah, I know,” he says.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing, for now,” Dan shrugs. “I’m not the Chancellor and this isn’t the Ark. I’m not going to punish people for having a little fun. We deserve it after the hell we went through to get here.”

“So what _do_ we do?” Nelly frowns, folding her arms over her chest.

“We get organised,” Dan cups a handful of water from the newly turned basin he’s just made and splashes it on his face. “We make shelters – tents out of the parachutes and scraps of the drop ship. We gather ferns and shit to make beds. We look for animals to hunt and berries to eat. We _survive_.”

“So who died and made _you_ Chancellor?” one of the other delinquents, Tripp Vanderbilt, challenges – only Nelly sees Dan flinch. “Why do you get to boss us around? You think because you’ve got a guard’s uniform we have to listen to you? Well I’ve got news for you, ‘Captain’ – I’m not taking orders from anyone.”

Dan shakes his head.

“I’m not the Chancellor, and I never claimed to be,” he says. “You want the job? Fine. But let’s be clear – there’s just a list of shit that needs to be done and I’m the one spelling it out. Do you have a problem with any of the things I’ve suggested? If so, be my guest,” he sweeps his hand out and gestures to the circle of teenagers watching their little faceoff. “Tell us what needs to be done. While you’re sitting pretty on your throne, I’m going to start building tents. Help is appreciated from people who need places to sleep at night.”

He walks off, towards the fallen parachutes. Nelly doesn’t even hesitate to follow him. After a beat of silence, Tripp scoffs and stomps off in the opposite direction, only to start picking up long, sturdy tree branches.

“What are you doing?” one of his friends asks.

“Tents need some kind of structure to hang off, don’t they?” Tripp scowls.

By the time Georgina returns from the woods wearing a predator’s grin and some other girl’s shirt, Dan has organised the delinquents into teams. One group is gathering long, sturdy branches to put together tent skeletons. Another group is sent into the woods to search for edible berries, roots, and fungus. The third group is cutting up the parachutes and sewing them into tent canvases.

Dan, whose parents worked in textiles, is carefully coaching Olivia Burke through sturdy stitching, his long fingers tugging the needle and thread through the thick material of the parachute with surprising ease.

“What are you doing there, Cinder-fella?” Georgina purrs. Her new shirt is low cut and unbuttoned so that her faded pink bra is on full display. She leans over Olivia’s shoulder to give Dan the best possible view.

“Building shelters,” Dan says, though his eyes linger briefly on her breasts. Georgina might be crazy, but he doesn’t deny that she’s gorgeous.

“Oooh, can one be for _me_?”

“Actually,” he stands up; smiling at Olivia to let her know that she should be fine on her own now. “I was thinking that you could be in charge of hunting. I know that you’re restless,” he looks at her pointedly, “I think you could channel all your… _aggressive energy_ into getting us something to eat.”

“What, am I just supposed to string up a bow and arrow and start shooting things like Robin Hood?” Georgina scoffs.

“I was thinking more like – traps, spears, knives and whatnot.”

Georgina purses her lips, looking at him seriously instead of teasingly for the first time since they landed on the ground.

“Okay,” she says. “Killing stuff; I can get behind it. What do you think I’ll need?”

“Hang on a sec – Asher!” he waves over one of the delinquents from the other side of the camp, and they wait for the other boy to jog over from where he was directing the tent-skeleton set ups.

“Yeah?”

“You’re from Mecha, right? You understand engineering concepts?” Dan asks.

“Yeah,” Asher nods.

“Maybe you and Georgina can design a bunch of animal traps and hunting weapons,” Dan suggests. “We don’t know what kind of animals are out there at the moment, so I guess just a general set of small-medium-large traps? But I’ll leave the details up to you if you like.”

“Yeah, I’ll take charge of this,” he shrugs.

“Great,” Dan nods, clapping Asher on the shoulder as he walks away. “I’ll leave you two to it.” Georgina turns to Asher with a mega-watt smile. He rolls his eyes.

“Don’t even try it,” he says. “I’m gay.”

“Too bad,” Georgina shrugs, playful. “You’re a hot piece.”

. . .

 

In the morning, after the downpour, it takes Blair’s little troop less than an hour to reach the river. It startles her at first, because there’s no river on the map, but then she mentally scolds herself.

It’s been hundreds of years since the map was drawn, and there was a nuclear war just after that. Of course not all the landmarks were going to match up.

“What do we do now?” Hazel asks. “None of us can swim.”

“Maybe there’s a bridge?” Nate suggests.

“Or a shallow place to cross,” Penelope offers.

“Maybe we don’t have to swim,” Eric says. “Maybe we can float. Build a raft or something. Find some logs?”

Blair shakes her head, tugging on her father’s ring, pulling until the chain digs into her neck. “No,” she says. “It’ll take too long to build. It’s better to just find a shallow place to cross, like Penelope suggested.”

They walk up the river a little until they come across a small waterfall and a string of rocks that stretch almost completely across the river.

“Perfect,” Blair says, and is preparing to cross slowly and carefully when Serena starts _stripping_ and giggling like a crazy person.

“Serena!” Nate gasps, scandalised. Hazel and Jenny appear to be enjoying the view, whilst Eric merely looks mildly embarrassed.

“Come _on_ , guys,” Serena beckons them closer, though Blair feels bitterness welling up inside her like bile. “When’s the last time we had baths?”

“When you put it like that,” Penelope and Hazel exchange glances and then also start peeling off their clothes. Jenny follows behind and soon four girls are splashing around in the shallow river while Nate, Blair, and Eric stand on the shore.

“We’re wasting time,” Blair protests. Serena pouts.

“B! Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“We have to get _food_ , Serena,” Blair scolds. “Food is essential to our survival.”

“Blair we have all day,” Penelope reminds her. “Let’s just wash up and then we can keep going.”

The water _does_ look good. Blair feels her resolve weakening, especially when she sees Nate and Eric share a shrug and star to unzip their jackets.

Eric is the first to see it, freezing mid-zip as he watches a submerged shadow pushing against the current and towards his sister.

“Jenny, get out of the water!”

“Why?” Jenny laughs. “It’s not poisonous.”

“Jenny!”

Penelope and Hazel scream when the creature pounces, it’s teeth gripping Jenny’s calf and dragging her beneath the surface. Eric is panicking, rushing towards his sister, but Nate – thinking clearly for once – grips the boy around the waist and pulls him back.

“Eric, stop!” Nate shouts. “You’re just going to make things worse. You don’t know how to swim!”

Serena doesn’t even think before she reacts, pushing off the rocks beneath her feet and towards Jenny and the water-creature. Everything after that passes in a flurry of flailing limbs, screams, and churning water.

“Quick!” Blair picks up a rock, tossing it at what she assumes is the tail of the creature. “Maybe if we distract it, it’ll let her go!”

Penelope and Hazel scramble onto land, picking up rocks to help Blair’s plan.

The shadow slithers away, investigating the source of the new disturbances in the water, but Serena and Jenny are nowhere to be seen.

“Where are they?” Eric gasps. “Where’s my sister?”

“There!” Nate shouts, pointing in relief when he sees a blonde head break the surface of the water, followed soon after by another blonde. “Serena!”

“Come on!” Serena tugs Jenny through the water, trying to swim back to the riverbank. “Jenny, come on!”

“It’s coming back, it’s coming back!” Eric shouts, even as he tries to pelt the creature with rocks from the bank. “Jenny, _get out of the water_!”

“I’ve got you,” Nate says, pulling Jenny out of Serena’s arms as his girlfriend climbs up the bank. “I’ve got you.”

“Serena, get away from it!” Hazel shouts, pulling Serena further away from the creature as it rams into the base of the rock they stand on.

“Fuck!” Jenny splutters, gasping for air.

“Don’t swear, Jen,” Eric snaps automatically, still looking wide-eyed and frightened. Jenny starts laughing even while coughing on the water in her lungs.

“You sound like Dan,” she tells him, rolling her eyes fondly even as Eric pulls her into a tight hug, his arms wrapping around her bony shoulders.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” he says.

“You _really_ sound like Dan,” Jenny says. And then: “I promise.”

“Your leg,” Blair kneels down beside them, examining the nasty bite marks on Jenny’s calf. “How much does it hurt?”

“I don’t know,” Jenny looks down. “I think I’m in shock.”

“Here,” Blair snatches up a sharp rock and cuts a strip off Eric’s t-shirt. He doesn’t protest as she shapes it into a makeshift tourniquet, tying it off just above Jenny’s injury.

“You can use my singlet as a bandage,” Serena offers, stripping off her tank top so that she’s lying on the rock in only her ratty black underwear.

Blair takes the offered material without a word.

She’d forgotten this part of Serena – her unthinking kindness. So much of her anger in the last nine months had been targeted at Serena’s obliviousness to consequences, about her selfish foolishness, her unthinking cruelty, that Blair had forgotten why Serena had always been her best friend in the first place.

Because of things like this. Because the first time Blair met Serena, Chuck Bass was teasing her for her messy curls and Serena had taken the headband off her head and given it to Blair without hesitation.

“Thank you,” Jenny murmurs, to both Blair and Serena as the former bandages her wound and the latter catches her breath. “Thank you.”

Blair finishes covering the injury and slumps back on the rock.

“So,” Hazel pipes up after a beat of silence. “Swimming is out.”

Suddenly they’re laughing, laughing so hard that tears spring to their eyes and they’re clutching their stomachs. It’s not even funny – Jenny almost _died_ – but the mixture of giddy relief and sheer exhaustion leaves them in stitches.

“Yes,” Blair agrees, helping Jenny to her feet. “Swimming is out. Put your clothes back on and we’ll look for something else.”

. . .

 

“Bass, we can’t just _cull_ three hundred of our own people,” Lily protests. “The children are on earth, and they’re surviving.”

“No, they’re not,” Jack Bass gestures to the panel full of terminated signals. “Eighteen out of one hundred. I don’t like those odds.”

“The deaths were too sudden,” Eleanor interjects. “It doesn’t match up with how radiation poisoning works. Those are _criminals_ that we’ve sent down there. Maybe they’re just killing each other.”

“Engineering tells us they need six months to fix life support,” Chancellor Bass says. “At our current population level we only have four months to live.”

“Give them _time_ ,” Lily begs.

“Just because your daughters are still alive—”

“So is _your son_ , Jack.”

“Forget Charles,” Bart scoffs. “Eleanor, you have ten days to prove that the earth is survivable. Ten days. Then I’m giving the order.”

“Father!” Jack protests.

“I’ve made my decision,” Bart says, limping away. Eleanor worries her bottom lip, knowing that the Chancellor is not yet fully recovered from the attempt on his life.

“This isn’t over,” Jack points a threatening finger at Lily and Eleanor, before following his father out the door.

“It’s not radiation,” Eleanor growls as soon as the doors close behind Chancellor and Councilman Bass. “It’s not. If it were, they would all be dead, or dying.”

“Blair and Serena are still alive,” Lily agrees. “We just have to figure out a way to contact them. Maybe we can send a signal through the wristbands.”

Eleanor shakes her head.

“According to Cyrus the wristbands aren’t made to receive signals, so the kids wouldn’t even hear it.”

“There’s got to be something we missed,” Lily insists. “Something we haven’t thought of. My _daughter_ is down there, Eleanor.”

“So is mine!”

They both jump at the sound of something clanging in the walls. Eleanor swears.

“Excellent,” she throws her hands up in exasperation. “What’s falling apart now?”

Lily says nothing, striding towards the door that leads to the maintenance hatch. Within seconds she punches in the authorisation code and yanks open the door. She steps into the hatch and snags the spy by the ankle, tugging him down off the ladder and into the observation deck.

“You,” Eleanor frowns, recognising the insolent mechanic who had been asking questions about the fake quarantine. “Apparently you have a thing for air ducts.”

“Actually, it’s a maintenance hatch,” the boy snits back.

“I’ll call security,” Lily says, heading for the console until the boy speaks.

“They’re not dying,” he says, folding his arms over his chest.

“I beg your pardon?” Eleanor arches an eyebrow at him.

He ignores her, examining the profiles of the hundred prisoners they’d sent to earth, his expression coldly pensive.

“All that’s being sent from the ground?” he asks.

Lily purses her lips before picking up one of the spare wristbands she and Eleanor had been examining and handing it to him.

“Transmitted by these,” she says. An admission.

The boy examines the cuff for a moment, turning it over in his hands, before throwing it nonchalantly back at Lily.

“They’re taking them off,” he smirks.

“What?” Eleanor sputters. “Why would they do something so reckless?”

Lily’s expression melts into a smirk mimicking the mechanic’s. She knows a thing or two about rebellious teenagers – she _was_ a rebellious teenager, in the day.

“Because we told them not to.”

. . .

 

Blair watches Nate tug on the vine-swing with wary eyes.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” she asks, for the fourth time. Nate rolls his eyes.

“Trust me,” he says. “I’m an engineer. I’ve spent years studying physics and shit. This is the most basic of basic constructs, B. I’ve got it.”

“You were also high eighty-per-cent of the time after you turned thirteen,” she points out, still sceptical.

“Blair,” he raises his eyebrows at her. “I’ve got this.”

She lets out a breath through her nose, gripping her father’s ring so tightly that the chain it’s on digs into her neck.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

“Serena,” Nate grins, eyes sparkling. “Come here.”

“How come _she_ gets to go first?” Hazel whines.

“Because she’s my girlfriend,” Nate shrugs, shameless. “Get up here, babe.”

“Nate,” Serena giggles. “You spoil me.”

“You know I do,” he leans in for a kiss and then helps her wrap the vine around her forearms. “Don’t let go until you’re at the top of the swing. Wait until your feet are pointed at where you want to land, got it?”

“Got it,” Serena nods, and she’s still beaming so brightly that her expression rivals the sun. “Kiss for luck?” Nate rolls his eyes but pulls her in for another kiss.

Serena takes a deep breath before launching herself forward, shrieking with delight as she flies across the river, her feet flailing wildly in the air.

“Serena let go!” Nate shouts, wincing as she untangles gracelessly from the vine and almost crashes into the other bank. “Babe, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she stands up, grinning, and Nate catches the vine as it swings back towards them. “We’ve made it!”

The rest of them whoop in excitement, thrilled by their accomplishment.

“Queen B, will you do the honours?” Nate bows mock-gallantly as he offers the vine to Blair. She rolls her eyes as she accepts it, climbing back up to the high point of the bank. Serena is still celebrating with a kooky little dance on the other bank.

“Look!” all heads turn to the other bank as Serena lifts a sign above her head. “We’ve made it!” The sign is rusted and the paint is faded, but Blair can still make out the basic outlines of the words _Mount Weather_ printed in large font.

“Victory is ours!” Nate shouts, laughing at his girlfriend’s antics. “Come on, B! We don’t have all day. Swing or let someone else have a shot.”

Blair rolls her eyes but grips the vine anyway, preparing herself to jump when—

The spear comes out of nowhere, hitting Serena with such force that she is flung backwards and pinned to a tree several metres behind her.

“Serena!” Nate shouts, his voice hoarse and desperate, rushing recklessly towards the river. “Serena!”

“Nate, no!” Blair lets go of the vine to grab Nate’s arm, pulling him down to the shelter of the high bank. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“What’s going on?” Hazel squeaks, huddled beneath the lip of the bank beside Penelope. “Blair? What’s going on?”

Blair shivers as the chain wrapped around her hand bites into her fingers.

“We’re not alone,” she says.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note:** idk what to say about this except to explain: yes, Hazel is a lesbian. yes, Jenny is bi (I completely believe that in GG canon she tends to be more attracted to girls than boys – Blair, Agnes, Serena – and clings so strongly to her crush on Nate and her brief relationship with Asher because heteronormative crushes are so rare for her.)
> 
> also: because the 100 is ~progressive and sexuality isn't as stigmatised, Asher is out as gay and therefore not as much of a dick (he's still kind of a dick, but not as much)


	4. you can't scream when you're dead

Dan sighs when Tripp taps him on the shoulder and holds up a shovel.

“We have to bury the bodies,” he says.

“I know,” Dan nods. “I’ll help. We– we should take their clothes. No sense in wasting resources for a dead man’s dignity.”

“Okay,” Tripp nods.

“Nelly,” Dan calls. “Supervise the tent building. And store the firewood somewhere dry.” He looks around at the rain-soaked clearing. “If you can find somewhere that’s dry.”

“I’m on it,” Nelly throws him an ironically solemn salute before walking off to do as he asks. Dan turns around to see Tripp smirking at him.

“What?”

“She has a crush on you.”

Dan rolls his eyes.

“You’re not as cute as you think you are, Vanderbilt,” he says. “Come on, we’ll bury them behind the drop ship.”

It takes a couple of hours to dig and refill the two graves. They aren’t marked, but even if they were, Dan doesn’t even know the boys’ names. Sombrely, he and Tripp gather up the boys’ clothes – threadbare jackets and scuffed boots and worn t-shirts. There’s nothing on the ark that comes new.

They walk back towards the drop ship clearing and are greeted with screams.

Without hesitating they both drop everything in their arms and rush towards the commotion. Chuck and Georgina are holding another girl over a newly lit bonfire; Georgina has the girl’s arms pinned behind her back, and Chuck is holding off the girl’s friends with a knife he’s obviously fashioned out of scrap metal.

“What the fuck, Sparks,” Dan rushes forward, ducking under Chuck’s knife and knocking the weapon from the boy’s hands. He punches Chuck in the face while Tripp pulls the girl out of Georgina’s grasp.

“What?” she shrugs. “We want the Ark to think we’re dying. It’s more realistic if we experience a little pain before death. Don’t you agree?”

“We want the Ark to think we’re dying _because_ we want to avoid this kind of senselessness,” Dan retorts. “Are you okay?” he asks the girl, who nods shakily. “Tripp, get her some water. Georgina, are you going hunting or not?”

“Party pooper,” Georgina pouts. “Come on baby Bass, let’s find something we _can_ poke with a sharp stick.” She turns on her heel and stalks into the forest. Chuck shrugs and jogs to follow her behind.

“Crazy bitch,” Tripp mutters. He puts an arm around the girl and leads her back to the drop ship. “Come on, let’s get you something to drink.”

Dan pushes his curls back from his forehead. He’s too young to feel this old, but it’s always in the back of his mind that everyone on the ground is younger than him, even if it is only by a year or two.

“Show’s over guys,” he says to the delinquents still hovering nearby. “If you have nothing to do, maybe take a break, but we still need more people making tent canvases. Volunteers are welcome.”

He’s directing construction of a larger meeting tent when Waldorf shows up. He’s surprised that she’s back at camp so early in the day – honestly he’d expected her hike to take at least one more day.

The first thing he sees is Waldorf pushing through the brush, her pale face flushed and blood all over her hands. The next thing he sees is Jenny, limping towards him with her arm around Archibald.

“Jenny!”

He takes her from Archibald’s arms and carries her to the open door of the drop ship as it lies across a fallen tree so that it’s approximately the height of a table.

“Nelly, get some water!” he shouts, and then turns back to his sister. She’s so pale, and she’s shaking. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands – he presses them against her cheeks, her shoulders, her knee. “What happened?”

“There was a river,” she says. “And a snake or a sea monster or something.”

“It tried to eat you?”

“Serena saved me.”

Dan looks around, searching for his sister’s rescuer. He doesn’t even realise that he’s stroking Jenny’s hair reassuringly, a habit from their childhood.

“Where is she?”

Eric’s hands are shaking as he drops his backpack beside his sister.

“Dan, she didn’t— we don’t know what happened—”

“Waldorf,” Dan interrupts Eric’s incoherent stuttering. “What happened?”

She swallows, clenching and unclenching her fists.

“We’re not alone on the ground,” she says. “Good news: it means the ground isn’t radioactive, and that earth is survivable.”

“Bad news?” Dan asks.

“They attacked us,” she whispers. “They got Serena. She got across the river and they– they threw a spear at her. It went right through her chest.”

“Shit,” Dan breathes, looking around the camp.

“We have to leave,” Waldorf tells him. “We can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”

“And where do you suggest we go?” Dan snaps, his fingers tightening around Jenny’s knee. He hears his sister whine “ _Dan_ ” in protest, but doesn’t look away from Waldorf. “We don’t know this land. We don’t know these people. Maybe they can be reasoned with.”

“They _threw a spear_ at Serena,” Waldorf hisses, hysterical.

“So we build walls,” Dan retorts. “We make weapons. We fortify ourselves. Get a grip, Waldorf. Jenny, you need stitches.”

“What?” Jenny shrieks.

“Don’t move; I’m going to get a needle.”

“You have medical experience?” Waldorf arches an eyebrow at him.

“I have sewing experience.”

“I’ll do the stitches,” she tells him. Dan opens his mouth to protest but she holds up a hand to silence him. “My mother’s a doctor. I know what to do. Besides,” she tugs on the Yale ring around her neck, “she was my responsibility when we left. This happened on my watch.”

He shuts his mouth and offers her a sharp nod, gesturing for her to follow him over to the drop ship where he’s sure they’ve got a basic first aid kit stashed.

“Serena’s alive,” Waldorf tells him as they walk. “We need to get her back.”

“How do you know she’s alive?”

“We–” Waldorf swallows, anxious. “We heard her screaming. They must have moved her, and she started screaming. You can’t scream when you’re dead.”

And Dan thinks:

_That could have been Eric. That could have been Jenny._

So he says:

“I’ll go with you.”

“What?”

“To get your friend,” he clarifies. “I’ll go with you.”

“She’s not–” Waldorf shakes her head. Frustrated, scared, confused. “I don’t know if we’re friends anymore. But that doesn’t mean I want her to die.”

Dan hands her the first aid kit.

“Okay then.”

. . .

 

Carter eyes the broken panels and exposed wires of the passage warily. He’s not supposed to be in this section of Alpha Station – it’s generally Cyrus Rose’s territory – but whoever called in the work order asked for him specifically.

A very large part of him thinks that it’s a trap – that Councilwomen Waldorf and van der Woodsen are luring him out to Alpha Station so that they can arrest him and float him before he can spread word of the 100 prisoners that they sent down to the ground. Another part of him rationalises that if they wanted him arrested they’d just send guards down to Mecha Station without fanfare.

“Someone call for a mechanic?” he asks, knocking on the door he’d been directed to. He’s not at all surprised to see Eleanor Waldorf open the door. “If this is about what I saw on the observation deck – I already told you that I’m not going to tell anyone about it.”

“I’m not going to have you arrested, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Eleanor scoffs. “I hear you’re the youngest zero-g mechanic we’ve had in fifty years.”

“Fifty-two,” Carter corrects automatically.

“I have ten days to prove to the Chancellor that the earth is survivable,” Eleanor tells him. He appreciates her bluntness. “If I do not, three hundred and twenty innocent people will be culled.”

“What?” Carter startles backwards. “Why?”

“There’s a flaw in life support. Engineering needs six months to repair it, but at our current population level we only have four months to live. We might have been able to fix things without anyone the wiser but Charles–” she cuts herself off, apparently surprised by her own loose tongue.

Carter waits for her to gather her wits about her.

“This is what I brought you here for,” she strides over to a lump of canvas and tugs on the material. The fabric falls away to reveal – a hunk of junk.

“A glorified bathtub?” Carter arches an eyebrow.

“An escape pod. We salvaged it from the thirteenth station a hundred years ago. It’s been gathering dust ever since. I need you to get it ready for a drop within the next nine days. I need to get to my daughter on the ground.”

Carter circles the pod, frowning. It was obviously damaged when the thirteenth station self-destructed, and a lot of it’s wiring has fallen victim to entropy over time. But it’s salvageable, and in much better condition than he would have expected.

“I have conditions,” he says. Eleanor rolls her eyes.

“Of course you do.”

He thinks of Dan, and Jenny, and Eric. He thinks of his mom, of how she was floated four years ago for stealing morphine from the med-bay so that she could get high. There’s nothing left for him here, but there could be a family waiting for him on the ground. He knows what he wants.

“I’m coming with you,” he says. Eleanor opens her mouth to protest, and Carter’s gaze hardens. He crosses his arms. “You’re not the only one with people you love on the ground. I’m coming with you.”

Eleanor purses her lips, appraising him, before giving him a sharp nod.

“Fine. Can you do it?”

He inspects the pod again, mentally cataloguing what needs to be done.

“It’s not going to be easy,” he says, because it’s the truth, but then he grins. “But I live for a challenge. I can do it.”

. . .

 

Humphrey hovers like an anxious mother while she stitches Jenny’s leg. Blair is impressed at the girl’s silence, clutching Eric’s hand and biting her lips to keep from screaming while Blair closes the wounds as best she can.

“You’re getting in my light,” she barks, and Humphrey grimaces and steps back. She can hear him pacing behind her; the crunching of leaves and dead grass beneath his boots as he shifts restlessly.

She may not like him – in fact she thinks he’s a stubborn idiot who doesn’t take the threat of the grounders or starvation seriously – but she appreciates his concern for his siblings. She can’t remember the last time she saw anyone love so _earnestly_.

Blair doesn’t think about Serena until after she’s wrapped Jenny’s injury in actual bandages she pulled from the first aid kit. It was easy to forget when she was concentrating on something else, but now she’s hit with her overwhelming guilt.

It was her call to return to camp after Serena was attacked, and it was her call to keep going even when they heard her screaming. Blair and Penelope had to physically restrain Nate when he heard his girlfriend’s anguished cries for help.

_There’s nothing we can do! We need to return to camp and regroup._

She feels sick just thinking about it.

“Do you have any weapons?” she asks Humphrey, who lifts up his t-shirt to reveal toned abs and the butt of a gun. She bites her tongue but can’t help the way her eyebrows raise. She can even feel the corners of her mouth twitching, amused that even when everything’s gone to shit she can still appreciate a handsome man.

“Good, follow me,” she picks up the first aid kit and turns to leave, but Humphrey grabs her by the arm.

“We need more people,” he says. He’s right, too, damn him. “We don’t know what’s out there, and your friend may need to be carried back to camp.”

“Fine.”

Humphrey wanders off to find others to join their rescue mission, and Blair finds Nate by a barrel of water with Hazel and Penelope. The girls exchange a glance when they see Blair approaching, and quietly slip away.

“Nate, I need you to fix the communications system in the ship,” she says.

“No, I’m going with you to find Serena.”

“Nate, you can’t–”

“She’s my girlfriend!”

“I know,” Blair puts a hand on his shoulder, and uses the other to tilt his chin so that he’s forced to look her in the eye. “But we _need_ to tell the Ark that earth is survivable, and warn them about the failing life support system. You’re Cyrus Rose’s best apprentice, even when you’re higher than a satellite. If anyone can fix the comm system, it’s you.”

Nate’s expression is pained. He loves Serena, she knows he does – but she loves Serena too, even if she hasn’t shown it much lately.

“I _will_ bring Serena back,” she says. “I promise. I _promise_.”

Nate sighs, dragging a hand over his face tiredly.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

“She’s my best friend, Nate,” Blair says, subdued.

“Is she?”

“She betrayed me and my father died, but I– I miss her. I don’t want her to die, and I don’t want the last thing I ever said to her to be something cruel. I love her. I want her to know that.”

Nate sighs, wrapping his arms around Blair’s shoulders and pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. Blair is embarrassed to realise that she’s sobbing into his chest.

“She loves you, too, B,” he says.

“I hate to cut this little reunion short, but I’m ready to go if you are, Waldorf,” Humphrey interrupts. Blair rolls her eyes. He was obviously raised without manners, but there’s little she can do about it now.

She steps out of Nate’s embrace and meets Humphrey’s eyes. Standing beside him are Tripp Vanderbilt, Kati Farkas, and Isobel Coates.

“I’ve left Nelly in charge of the camp,” Humphrey tells Nate, “but Asher’s watching Jenny and Eric in the drop ship. If you need anything – tents, water, whatever – you can probably ask either of them.”

“Thanks, uh,” Nate grimaces when he realises he doesn’t know the boy’s name.

“Dan. Humphrey.”

“Thanks, Humphrey.”

Humphrey turns back to Blair, raising an expectant eyebrow.

“So, are you ready, Waldorf?”

She’s not fazed – he’s not nearly as intimidating as he seems to think – and simply strides past him, picking up the first aid kit as she goes.

“Just follow my lead, Humphrey,” she says. “You’ll get used to doing that.”

He scoffs, but nevertheless follows her out of the camp.

. . .

 

“Who’re you?” Jenny frowns at the boy who follows her and Eric into the ship.

“Asher,” the boy says. “Your brother asked me to keep an eye on you two.”

Jenny scoffs.

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“You might need a nurse, though,” Asher nods at her leg. Eric stifles a laugh. Asher winks at him, and he blushes.

“Shut up,” Jenny rolls her eyes.

“There are some blankets on the second floor,” Asher shrugs. “They’re probably more comfortable than these seats. Come on, I’ll boost you up.”

Jenny frowns at him, fingers clenching into fists.

“I don’t need anyone’s help,” she says, limping over to the ladder.

Eric and Asher exchange glances.

“Is your sister always so… gung-ho?”

“She’s got about fifteen years worth of pent up anger issues and resentment,” Eric shrugs. “She hates taking things out on Dan since he’s always been there for us, and he tries so hard. It’s nice for her to have other targets, I guess.”

“Even if that other target is me?”

Eric’s smile turns teasing. “You’re cute,” he says, “but not cute enough for me to take Jenny’s wrath from you. It’s about time someone else listened to her whining.”

“You’re just as whiny as me, you ass,” Jenny calls down the hatch. “I can hear everything you’re saying. Respect your elders!”

“You’re twelve minutes older than me!” Eric shouts back. “Get over yourself!”

“Never!” Jenny laughs. Eric rolls his eyes.

“I’m going to go up and help her with her blankets,” he says to Asher.

“Is there anything else you guys need?”

“Water, maybe?”

Asher nods.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Eric climbs up the ladder and sees Jenny settling herself into one of the seats beneath the dim moonlight glow of one of the emergency lights.

“I’ll get the blankets,” he tells her. Jenny smiles at him, tired.

On the other side of the room is Nate, the cute guy who came with them to the river. He’s frowning at a mess of wires and metal, holding up an electric lantern for better light. Eric spies a few shapeless sacks just behind the other boy.

“Excuse me,” he murmurs. Nate looks up in surprise. “Could you pass some of the blankets over there? They’re for my sister…”

“Yeah, sure,” Nate nods, grabbing one of the sacks and handing it over.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

It’s an adjustment, for Eric – other people.

For so long his whole world was only a three-room apartment and a hole in the floor and the only people he ever spoke to were his parents and his siblings. Jenny’s discomfort manifests in her anger and aggressive independence, and Eric knows that she still holds some of the mentality that anyone outside of their family is the enemy, especially after their parents were executed several months ago.

Eric, for his part, looks forward to making new friends, new people to speak to. He knows Dan and Jenny backwards and forwards, and he likes the idea that there are people less… _intense_ than his siblings.

Asher’s really cute, too.

“Here, Jen,” he helps his sister sit up, and slides a folded up blanket beneath her, picking up another one to wrap around her. She rolls her eyes.

“I don’t need babying,” she says, but she pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders anyway. They never had anything this nice on the Ark.

Asher appears moments later, balancing a makeshift bowl of scrap metal in one hand as he climbs through the hatch.

“I brought you guys some water,” he says, handing the bowl to Eric.

“Thanks.”

“Wait,” Nate appears beside them, snatching at Asher’s arm.

He’s frowning; wearing a stormy expression that Eric realises is strangely familiar. It’s the same look his dad used to have before inspections and he and Jenny were shoved under the floorboards; it’s the same expression Dan wore when he came to visit he and Jenny in lockup to tell them that their parents had been floated.

“Where’s your wristband?” Nate asks.

“I took it off,” Asher shrugs.

“Why?”

“It’s uncomfortable. You should take yours off, too. You’ll feel better after.”

“Don’t you get it?” Nate shouts, causing the other three to jump. “You can’t take the wristbands off! You’re going to kill us all!”

“You’re being a little dramatic, prince charming,” Asher sneers.

“The Ark is _dying_ ,” Nate growls. “Why do you think I’m trying to fix the comm system? They have to know the earth is survivable before they run out of air.”

“You think I care?” Asher snaps back.

“You should! Your family is up there!”

“I don’t have a family. The Ark killed my mom, and they sentenced me to death, too. If they get to the ground they’re just going to keep up their reign of tyranny. At least Dan cares about all of us, and not just the Alpha kids.”

“Who’s Dan?” Nate frowns.

“Our brother,” Jenny tells him.

“Well then maybe we should tell him what’s happening on the Ark. Let your _leader_ decide what to do about it.”

Asher scoffs.

“He’s not our leader,” he says. “We don’t follow him blindly, or call him _Chancellor Humphrey_. We’ve been on the ground for two days, and he’s the only one who seems to have any vision for what we can become.”

“And what’s that?”

“A community,” Asher says. “Survivors.”

“Well then we can tell our _community_ what’s happening on the Ark,” Nate growls. “You may not have a family up there, but other people do. Let them decide.”

They glare at each other for several moments. Eric stands beside Jenny with bated breath, terrified that Nate and Asher might actually attack each other. Finally, Asher lets out a huff of breath and steps back, turning to the twins.

“Let me know if you need anything,” he says. “I’m going to help supervise the wall building. There’s water in a barrel downstairs.”

Then he leaves.

. . .

 

Dan follows Waldorf through the forest, watching her out of the corner of his eye. In some ways she’s exactly what he expected her to be – bossy, arrogant, and incapable of seeing the bigger picture. But she’d also taken responsibility for his sister, stitching up Jenny’s wound, and now she’s leading a search party for a girl that he’s not even sure she really likes.

“What’re we doing, Dan?” Tripp asks him, stepping over a fallen tree. “How do we even know if Serena’s alive? Is this little rescue mission really worth the effort?”

“We’re not on the Ark anymore, Tripp,” Dan shakes his head, voice low. “We don’t just let people die because it’s easier. Besides,” he glances ahead to check the Waldorf is out of earshot, “Waldorf and van der Woodsen – two councilwomen’s daughters. We get their wristbands and convince Alpha station that their kids can’t survive, then the Ark won’t come down and we can get a fresh start.”

“I don’t think Waldorf’s going to go for that,” Tripp shakes his head.

“We’ll just have to convince her, then.”

“Hurry up, Humphrey,” Waldorf calls from ahead. “We don’t want the trail to go cold. Your dawdling could get Serena killed.”

“If she isn’t dead already,” Tripp mutters.

“Is she always this goddamn bossy?” Dan asks.

“Pretty much,” Kati says, panting as she lags behind with Is.

“She was a nightmare in group projects,” Is adds.

“I’ll bet,” Dan adjusts the pack on his shoulder and lengthens his stride. He’ll say this for Waldorf – she’s fit for someone who spent nine months in solitary. Tripp stays behind with Kati and Is as Dan catches up with the tiny brunette.

“I’ve been thinking,” Waldorf says as soon as he reaches her, “about Serena. Whoever’s on the ground with us didn’t attack us until she crossed the river. I mean, we weren’t exactly quiet on our way there. Which means the river’s a boundary.”

“And that mountain’s on the other side,” Dan finishes her thought. “Which means we’re cut off from whatever supplies we might have gotten there.”

“Exactly,” Waldorf frowns. “So what’re we going to do for food?”

“Same thing as the grounders, I guess,” Dan shrugs. “Forage, hunt, farm.”

“What do any of us know about foraging or farming, Humphrey?”

“Some of the kids are from Farm Station – they’d know a bit about what stuff is edible, and how to handle it. Engineering kids can build traps for hunting,” Dan touches her elbow more gently than he expected from himself. “We’ll be okay, Waldorf. We’re a pretty resourceful bunch.”

She scoffs.

“How would you know? You barely know these kids. We’ve been on the ground for _two days_ , Humphrey.”

“And we’re already building a camp,” Dan retorts, letting go of her elbow. “We’re already working together.”

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Waldorf sniffs. When Dan glares at her she clarifies: “With Georgina Sparks around, everything’s bound to dissolve into chaos sooner or later.”

Well. She’s got him there. Georgina _is_ trouble.

They stomp forward in silence for a few minutes until they hit the river. They’re obviously farther upstream than where Jenny was attacked, because there’s a small waterfall and the water is shallower here – no sea-monsters in sight.

“Well, at least water won’t be a problem,” Dan says. They’re less than an hour’s walk from camp, here. He’ll have to figure out a way transport large quantities of it later, though. He pulls a makeshift water-skin from his bag and bends to fill it.

Waldorf watches him carefully and when he’s done he offers it to her. She takes it and immediately starts gulping from it. He doesn’t think she had anything to drink back when they were at camp – too busy taking care of Jenny.

“You could say thank you,” he says. She scowls at him and shoves the skin back at him. He rolls his eyes and refills it, scooping some water in his palm for a drink.

He can hear Kati and Is huffing and puffing as they draw nearer. They should probably take a break at the river and have something to drink.

He turns to Waldorf to suggest a breather only to find that she’s disappeared from his side. Shit. He looks around, searching, and then hears desperate splashing further down the stream. She’d better not be drowning.

Dan caps the water-skin and jumps to his feet. Waldorf’s downstream from him, wading through the shallows of the river. Wasn’t she the one that said Serena was attacked as soon as she crossed the river? She’s going to get herself killed.

“Waldorf!” He hisses, trying to keep his voice quiet in case whoever attacked Serena hasn’t noticed them already. “What are you doing?”

“There’s blood on the other shore!” she hisses back. He squints at the rocks she’s splashing towards – there are some dark red splashes scattered across them.

“Waldorf, just _wait_ ,” he jumps into the river, wading after her. He pulls the gun from his belt as well, but keeps the safety on, and scans the trees. If there _are_ grounders nearby, they must be very well camouflaged.

She’s already on the other bank, rummaging through the nearby bush, looking for a clue that might confirm that it’s Serena’s blood on the rocks. Dan catches up to her and she holds up a broken wristband.

“She was here,” Waldorf says. “The blood is fresh. We must be close.”

“Okay,” Dan nods, taking the wristband from her fingers. Well, there’s one less worry for him. He puts it in his pocket and grabs Waldorf by the arm as she tries to wander off again. “Just wait. Let the others catch up.”

“Why?”

“Do you know how to track your friend through the woods?” Dan arches an eyebrow. Waldorf just pouts and crosses her arms across her chest. Dan’s eyes dart to her lips and to her cleavage before he clears his throat and looks back to the river. Why is it that the pretty ones are also the most frustrating?

“Tripp was in Level Four Earth Skills,” he tells her. “Tracking is one of the topics he’s covered. Give them five minutes to catch up and then Tripp will take the lead.”

“Fine.”

The other three appear on the opposite bank in less than a minute, Kati and Is immediately diving towards the water to quench their thirst. Waldorf scoffs impatiently, but otherwise remains thankfully silent.

Tripp spots them first and gets the girls’ attention before leading them across the river, warily eyeing the water as though another monster would leap out at them at any moment. Justified paranoia.

“We got a lead?” Tripp asks as soon as he’s across the river. Dan just points at the blood on the rocks, and Blair holds up Serena’s wristband.

Tripp takes the twisted metal in his hands, glancing up at Dan with a firm expression – _one down_ ; it seems to say. _One to go_.

“There are broken branches over here, but the gravel in this area may be hard to track over,” Tripp says, while the girls slosh through the river. “Kati and Is can catch their breath here for a few minutes while we scout ahead.”

“Oh, thank god,” Kati breathes, flopping down on the bank, Is following behind.

“Well, while you get your beauty rest, _I’ll_ be trying to save a life,” Waldorf snits at them turning on her heel to follow Tripp into the forest.

Dan rolls his eyes.

“Don’t take too long, okay?” he tells Kati and Is. “And try to stay covered. This is where the others were attacked, and we don’t need any more rescue missions.”

“Okay, _dad_ ,” Is rolls her eyes, but she still shuffles towards the part of the bank where the trees grow closer to the river and provide more shelter.

“See you in a few minutes,” he says, and then turns to catch up with Tripp and Waldorf, whom he can already hear bickering further on.

. . .

 

“Just _shut up_ , Blair,” Tripp hisses. “I’m trying to concentrate. And stay behind me, I don’t want you to confuse any tracks or I’ll lose the trail.”

“William Lloyd Vanderbilt the Third, if Serena _dies_ because of your dilly-dallying I will personally feed you to whatever’s lurking in that river.”

“So no pressure then,” Tripp scoffs. “Just stay out of the way, Blair. I’ll find her, okay? I’ll find her. She’s my friend, too.”

Blair huffs, but steps back. She hears Humphrey coming up behind her, and then feels his solid presence at her shoulder. She’d never admit it, but she feels safer with him here. He’s got a gun and relatively good sense – though she’s grading on a curve down here – and she trusts him enough to believe that he’ll help her save Serena, if only because her best friend saved his sister.

In relative silence they follow Tripp as he carefully steps through the forest, squinting at broken branches and puddles in the mud and the occasional blood stain on a tree trunk. They find a red handprint pressed into the moss at the base of a tree, and Blair’s breath catches in her throat.

She absolutely _refuses_ to cry, but she doesn’t know what she’ll do if all they find at the end of this is Serena’s corpse. She has hated her best friend for so long because she never got the chance to hear an apology, locked in solitary with only her fear and anger to keep her warm. The reason she hates Serena so much is because she _loves_ her so much, because it’s the betrayal of those closest to you that hurts the most.

Serena probably didn’t think her mother, or Blair’s mother, or Nate’s mother would let her father die. Harold Waldorf was friendly with the council, and politics had never been Serena’s forte. She would never have done what she did if she’d in any way anticipated the outcome.

Blair’s been so _cold_ to Serena since they landed on the ground – she hadn’t even hugged her when they’d been separated for almost a year.

“What’re you thinking, Waldorf?” Humphrey murmurs in her ear, his voice low and his breath warm. Part of her just wants to tuck her face into his shoulder and ask for a hug, something with the same warmth with which he’d embraced the twins, or the way Nate had embraced her only a day ago.

But Humphrey is a stranger, and he doesn’t hand out hugs like candy, so she steels herself before she turns to him.

“Medicine,” she tells him. “I don’t know how badly she’s injured. If she needs surgery–” one hand tugs on the strap of the first aid kit slung around her shoulder while the other clutches at her father’s ring.

“Breathe, Waldorf,” he catches her by the shoulder and turns her so that they’re face to face, with him stooping a little to look her in the eye. “First we find her. We’ll figure out our next move from there.”

His eyes are dark and serious, and Blair finds herself reassured.

She still doesn’t like him though.

Both their heads snap up when they hear the high-pitched moan emanating from deeper within the forest. Tripp glances over his shoulder at them and points to an almost hidden path that leads into a dense wall of ferns.

Behind them, Kati and Is burst through the brush, panicked.

“What was that?” Kati asks.

“Serena,” Blair pushes past Tripp and follows the path through the ferns, emerging in a clearing with a large, leafless tree in the centre. Strung up in the branches is Serena, bleeding and moaning in pain.

“Serena!” she rushes forward, desperate to help her friend.

“What is this?” Humphrey asks, following close behind. Almost as soon as the words leave his mouth, the ground beneath Blair’s feet gives way.

 _Trap_ , she thinks as she falls and her heart stops beating. She half turns to latch onto the edge of the pit, but finds herself grasping Humphrey’s hand, instead. She glances behind her and sees a pit lined with spikes. If he drops her, she’ll die.

For a moment that stretches into eternity they hang there, staring at each other, his fingers digging into her wrist while hers scrape the coarse fabric of his jacket. Then he clenches his jaw and _pulls,_ leaning back so that his weight drags her higher and allows her to scramble for purchase on the edge of the pit.

Tripp rushes towards them moments later, helping her to her feet. Blair doesn’t take her eyes off Humphrey, can’t take her eyes off him. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking, frowning down at her, his hand warm on her wrist, feeling the fluttering of her pulse beneath his fingers.

“Are you okay?” Tripp asks, still standing by her shoulder.

Blair nods, still looking at Humphrey, who is still looking back.

“We should get her down from there,” Tripp says. “Kati, Is, come help me with this.” He carefully makes his way towards the tree, testing the ground before he steps forward, in case there are any more spike-filled pits.

Humphrey closes his eyes and shakes his head, turning his face towards Serena.

“There’s some kind of paste on her wounds,” he says, frowning.

Blair turns as well, and spots the green poultice on Serena’s shoulder.

“Medicine,” she breathes. Good. If she can find whatever they used to stop the bleeding, it gives them a better chance of surviving on the ground.

“Why would they save her life just to string her up as live bait?” Kati asks, grunting she climbs up the tree towards Serena.

“Maybe whatever they’re trying to catch likes its dinner to be alive,” Is suggests.

“Maybe what they’re trying to catch is us,” Humphrey says, finally letting go of Blair’s wrist and letting his hand drop down to the gun at his waist.

Blair scans the trees for any signs of grounders, glancing up every few minutes to watch Tripp take Serena’s weight in his arms while Kati and Is cut the ropes binding her to the branches. She feels dizzy with adrenaline, hating the dense forest because it could be hiding any number of enemies.

They’ve half-freed Serena when they hear the growling.

“What the hell was that?” Is asks, pressing her hand to her heart.

“Grounders?” Kati twists in the tree, trying to spot the enemy.

Through the path that they came through, a large black cat appears – maybe a jaguar or a panther or some other, mutated beast. It’s eyes land on Blair, and for the second time in the space of a few minutes, she feels her heart stop.

She’s frozen in place as the creature sprints towards her, its sharp teeth bared. She wants to run away, but she’s afraid that she’ll just fall into another pit of spikes, so all she can do his shift her weight restlessly and shout:

“Humphrey! Gun!”

Shots are fired and the creature veers off course, disappearing into the greenery on Blair’s right while Humphrey rushes to her side, still with his gun up. She presses her back to his, scanning the area for signs of the beast.

None of them dare move, barely even breathing for fear of drawing the beast’s attention. Blair swings her hand back until it connects with Humphrey’s waist, reassuring herself that he’s still behind her.

He’s the one with a weapon, after all.

“Where’d it go?” she whispers.

“I don’t know,” Humphrey whispers back, his free hand coming down to cover her fingers on his belt, looking for reassurance of his own.

Out of nowhere, the beast roars and leaps towards her. All she can think is: oh god oh god she’s going to die – that _monster_ is going to claw her face off and eat her intestines and her corpse will be a mangled, ugly thing.

Blair screams, and Humphrey’s arm comes around her waist, pulling her out of the way even as he empties his clip into the jaguar-panther-thing. The creature whines as it collapses in front of them, blood pooling at their feet.

Blair can feel the blood rushing under her skin, can feel Humphrey’s heart pounding against her shoulder, his arm still around her waist and pressing her against him. She turns her head, meeting his eyes.

He is wide-eyed and pale, sweat beading on his forehead. She imagines that she’s wearing the same expression, and she’s thankful for the arm around her waist because she doesn’t think her knees can hold her weight right now.

“You okay?” he asks, panting.

Blair nods.

Humphrey looks down at the beast in front of them and starts laughing.

Laughing.

What. The Hell.

“What, Humphrey?” Blair slaps his chest and disentangles from his arms.

He just points to the corpse.

“We just solved our dinner problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Dan and Blair aren't really bickering as much as they do in canon, but for me it's pretty in character for them – they generally work pretty well together when it comes to crisis management (whenever they schemed against Georgina, Carter, Juliet etc they agreed on courses of action). Also, in this universe they haven't really known each other long enough to build up a bickering rapport. 
> 
> I do enjoy how their personal monologues include them actively telling themselves not to like each other. These two dorks in denial are so much fun, no wonder I love them so much.
> 
> But if you think anyone's acting out of character at any point, let me know.


End file.
